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Ogawa Bimei/Trivia
* His real name was Ogawa Kensaku. His pen name "Bimei" can be read also as "Mimei". * He is considered as Japan's Hans Christian Andersen, known for his children's literature which critics found rather "dark" over time. ** Beside literature aimed at children, he wrote other genres too including socialistic, communistic, neo-romanticist stories, lots of essays, even some poems and so on. * He was born to a prestigious, former samurai family in Echigo (these days known as Niigata) as only child. His father was a devoted worshipper of Uesugi Kenshin, to the extent that he established a shrine for the said warlord. He also was interested about Sinology. Due to these facts, Bimei was raised the way that reflected his father's interests and background (for example, when Bimei was 8-9 years old, he started to practice kendo and was taught Chinese classics). * Since his birth, he had close relationship with his grandmother from his mother's side during his childhood. She read him fairytales and taught basics of shōgi while she was still alive. * During his middle school years, Bimei started to grow tired of Niigata and its heavy snow winters, wanting to move to Tokyo. His mathematics grades were also bad around the time, but otherwise he did well at school. * In 1901, he moved to Tokyo and entered the Waseda University to study English literature. There he met Tsubouchi Shouyou, who was one of his teachers. Bimei received his pen name from Shouyou a few years later. * In the Waseda University, he got interested about Koizumi Yakumo's English literature history lectures and texts so much, that he made his graduation thesis about the author. ** Beside Yakumo's works, around the same time he found Russian literature and Narodniks, finding their ideology interesting. Revolution, socialism and anarchy lead a big role in his life later. * From 1903 onwards he started to write and published his first work "Silk-Tree Flowers" (Nemu no Hana) in a magazine called "Sketch". He received so good reputation that when in 1905 he graduated from the Waseda University, he established his name as an author. * In 1906 he married a woman called Kichi. The two had two daughters and four sons. Unfortunately due to poverty and rough times that started in 1910, their oldest son died in 1914, followed by their oldest daughter's death in 1918. After losing two children, Bimei was hit by deep sadness he managed to fight somehow with writing. Same year he started to write more fairytales and published many of them in "Red Bird" (Akai Tori), a magazine of literature and songs aimed for children. **Other notable contributors for the magazine were Akutagawa Ryuunosuke, Kitahara Hakushuu, Arishima Takeo, Niimi Nankichi and so on. * By Masamune Hakuchou's recommendation, he became a night shift reporter for Yomiuri Shinbun in 1907. * In 1908 Bimei started a literary group "The Blue Bird Party" (Seichoukai), which was a neo-romanticist movement against the naturalist authors and their literature. Later this group splitted up and gave birth to magazine "Black Smoke" (Kokuen) in 1918, serving as part of the basis for the rising proletarian literature in Japan. **Japanese proletarian literature changed around 1921. Before this, the movement mostly consisted of liberalists, anarchists like Bimei and other groups, before communism and marxism took over it. * Through his life he was a member of many different associations and groups, having no actual place where he belonged to for a long time. * He shared a lot of same interests and ideologies with Arishima Takeo. The two were occasionally members in same associations and magazine groups, especially in ones related to socialism and anarchism, both feeling sympathy towards the working class as people coming from "good" families. * Bimei played a lot of shōgi with fellow author Iwano Houmei. ** Based on some friends and Houmei's words, Bimei had rather short temper and would quickly act in different situations, hating to wait long times. He disliked noisy people and long-time friendships. * His hobbies included collecting antiques and taking care of bonsais. *He died at age 79 in 1961 May 11th due to cerebral hemorrhaging five days earlier, which left him in weak condition.